David Ignatius: "Bloodmoney"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-06-01/david-ignatius-bloodmoney
A new novel set largely in Pakistan imagines a rogue CIA unit secretly established to fight terrorism. It opens with a U.S. predator drone strike on a family compound in Pakistan’s tribal region. An American-educated computer scientist is home for a visit. He sees his parents, his brothers and his boyhood home obliterated. The novel has all the elements of a good spy thriller - the fast pace, the intrigue, the pretty female protagonist. The author has been reporting on international affairs, the CIA and the Pentagon for decades. In the novel, and in our studio, he offers insights on U.S. policy and the war on terror.
Guests
David Ignatius
columnist, The Washington Post; contributor to “Post Partisan” blog on washingtonpost.com. His latest book is titled "Bloodmoney: A Novel of Espionage."
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Program Highlights
What is the ISI?
Author and journalist David Ignatius's new novel, "Bloodmoney," is a spy novel set in modern-day Pakistan. Focusing on a rogue CIA unit in that country, some are probably wondering how true to life his chosen subject may be.
Ignatius calls the ISI "a pervasive intelligence presence" that frightens people in Pakistan. As part of the Pakistani military, it its offices around that country have been targets of Taliban and suicide bombers, so it has lost many officers. Ignatius says the ISI is the "eyes and ears" of the military.
"Have there been rumors that the ISI may have been infiltrated by al Qaida?" Diane asked.
"There are rumors. They're persistent," Ignatius said. The ISI is so complicated partially because, Ignatius says, the U.S. asked it to recruit among Islamic fundamentalists at the time when America had decided the best way to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan was to effectively organize a Jihad against them. Now, the U.S. is asking for the ISI's help in cracking down on, for instance, the Haqqani network that has been killing American and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan - but Ignatius says we "have to be honest enough to remember" that the Haqqani network first came into power because the U.S. provided the money and training for its members decades ago.
A Book About Revenge
Ignatius's main character, Omar al-Wazir, is a modern, well-educated and well-traveled Pakistani man from the tribal region of Waziristan. He sees his whole family killed as the result of a Predator drone attack."This is a book about revenge - it's about his revenge against the people who killed his family, it's about our revenge against the people who killed so many of our fellow citizens on September 11, 2001. It's about this cycle of revenge that we've gotten caught up in," he said.
After seeing his family killed in such a brutal way, al-Wazir's life changes dramatically, and his quest for revenge begins. One of Ignatius's challenges that he set for himself in writing the book was to try to "see this war from the eyes of the people under our bombs, which is not something we normally do."
The U.S.'s Increasing Use of Drones
Diane read an email from a listener in Hartford with a question for Ignatius: "I keep hearing our drones are creating enemies and therefore, we should stop sending drones," she wrote. "Shouldn't we stop sending drones because it's the moral thing to do? We always talk about the cowardly al Qaida. What could be more cowardly than fighting with drones?"
Ignatius said the same questions began to haunt him over the past several years, and is one of his main reasons for writing this book.[The drones] allow you to kill people from 10,000 feet, which seems, to our public, I think wrongly, less bloody than if we did it right up close standing next to someone with a gun," he said.
Read an Excerpt
From David Ignatius's "Bloodmoney." Copyright 2011 by David Ignatius. Excerpted by kind permission of W. W. Norton & Company.
Comments
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Our government rewards blood money at home too. Wives or parents of an Afghanistan fatality might see as much as $500,000 through the legislated and arranged compensations and insurance. Maybe the lesser amounts paid for collateral deaths "in country" illustrates structural racism or ethnic classism. This war ain't going nowhere except into the pockets of the richest Americans and transnational speculators.
I hope you wrote a good book, David Ignatius. People don't read good books anymore, but scan for pertinent data, at their jobs and in their household budget struggles. And even more than that (Chris Hedges agrees with me) they don't care about any Great Game or military mission on the other side of the world. They prefer fantasies you can turn on and off at will: the synthetic world of cyberspace. Real world events don't matter because they are "unreal" too. The advertisers and the political manipulators crippled us in this way for their advantage, but now they are finding us "heart dead" in ways that are bewildering, and tragic and unmanageable. The rich and powerful took no care in their wishes... too bad their wishes came true.
To what extent would you say that your protagonist were motivated by survivor's guilt? Many terrorists seem to have a version of this, in that they are better-off members of a system that they feel is oppressing their brothers and sisters.
(This is not an endorsement of them in the least: it is entirely possible, even easy, to do great evil believing that you are acting entirely righteously...something which we ought to remember and seem never to do.)
In accord with the author's opinion, I fear that drones, as much as other remote controlled robotic fighting machines, disconnect us from the actuality on the ground, producing more enemies than friends.
Let us recall that forty years ago Westerners were able to travel alone unharmed in Afghanistan:
http://brainmindinst.blogspot.com/2009/07/computers-mind.html
Drone attacks are not going to bring us back to such time.
I so agree with your guest's view on revenge. An old Chinese Proverb goes "once you begin a path of revenge dig two graves, one for your enemy and one for yourself.
error
I think every time people talk about 'lawless' areas of Pakistan or Afghanistan they fail to acknowledge that these people do have laws. They have tribal law, not always written law, and each tribe or tribal confederation has slightly different ones. These laws deal with property rights, behavior, personal harm, etc. What the government of the U.S. seems to want, and what many people in the media seem to suggest, is that we in America would be better off if these people came under the control of a government, and a government that runs similar to ours.
But look at this from their point of view for a minute. We want them to accept that instead of following the elders of their community as they have for generations, they should ultimately follow strangers who they have never met and will never see. Strangers who are picked by the majority of people who they do not know and do not care about. Picked by checking a box next to an unknown name in a series of unknown names. Not only is this bizarre to them, they also see it as a loss of freedom. The tribe will have less freedom to settle grievances with other tribes, less income if they pay required taxes, and less say in judicial proceedings.
And given the well publicized corruption of the Afghan or Pakistan government, it could be years or decades before any federal projects get completed in these areas, so what little benefit may be gained is so far away that they see it as unlikely to happen.
They have little desire to aid any government that seeks to take away their freedom, even if said governments think they have valid reasons for doing so.
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